Opinion: A Disappointing Chorus

Gemma Bennion

Weirdly, this story begins with fibre. 

No, not that fibre. I’m not a health TikToker selling magic beans. I’m talking fibre in the form of cables and high-speed internet: the unseen chords running underground, looping through neighbourhoods and connecting Wellington suburbs. 

We begin with fibre, because a major provider of these cables is a company called Chorus. Last week, Chorus placed an ad at Kelburn Campus that made me stop dead in my tracks. 

You might have seen it. The poster was about a meter and a half high and featured a student in a hoodie, beanie, and track pants lying on a couch with a laptop on her stomach. The text appeared in spongey white letters on a soft pink, almost innocent background. 

“Your flat might be freezing, but your internet shouldn’t be.” 

Ha. Right. Good one. 

Although, she can’t be that cold, I remember thinking. Her hoodie’s unzipped. 

I could have kept walking, but something held me there—the small, queasy part of me that felt cheated, knowing my hollow laugh was the intended reaction to this cavalier derision of poverty. So, I took a picture and emailed Chorus. 

The gist of it?

This is not okay. 

I lived in a “student flat” for a while. My partner called it a warehouse. It had high ceilings and gaps in the windows so wide you could stick a finger through them. Even on pleasant nights, the curtains ushered in a glacial breeze. 

On a hot day you wore a jersey. On a cold day your dragon breath followed you up the stairs as you made your way to the small kitchen-dining-room-laundry—the one place you could reliably heat. 

When we moved in, we levered up the floorboards and found a dead rat overdue eviction. I remember questioning the legality of our landlord’s ignorance as we were handed a list of insulated walls filled with hastily scribbled question marks. 

This is the student experience. And Chorus knows it. Or at least, they think they do. 

I doubt whoever approved the ad has truly felt “freezing” despite a beanie, two pairs of thick socks, and hot water bottle. I doubt they know the feeling of plugging gaps under doors, or developing that familiar, rattling, cough. The struggles of working while studying. Crying at the power bill. Panicking at the supermarket. Scavenging free food at Clubs’ Day. 

And then seeing stupid ads about broadband that make you feel so fucking helpless for a reason you can’t quite articulate. Because the older generation bristles and claims it’s normal. The chill builds character. You know—back in my day…

But they’re wrong. 

Enough children now live in poverty to fill Eden Park. The cost of bread has risen 50%. There’s a Gen Z joke that we should all have bought houses in the early 2000s. Instead, we were busy being born. As always, economic downturn hits the same groups the hardest: beneficiaries, those on New Zealand Super, people with disabilities, and students. Māori and Pasifika people make up an alarming proportion of those categories. 

And while the process of normalisation is expedited by the government, boomers, and the media, the chill growing in our bones screams reality. Because our problems are real. 

And most student flats aren’t merely “substandard”, by the way. Internationally? They would be considered criminal. I remember the shock of my flatmates—a Dane and a Brit—when I mucked in to scrub the chronic mold our landlord wouldn’t touch. 

“Isn’t this illegal?” 

“Do they at least provide PPE?” 

Those are the protections afforded abroad. Because, you know, decency. But not in “wet” and “whiny” New Zealand. Instead, we’ll keep our Black Mirror-Esque advertisements, thank you very much. The dystopian headlines that normalise our reality. The jokes that are really cries for help. 

Chorus responded to my inquiry saying all the right things. It was never their intention to offend. They promise to do better in future. Lovely, polite, and non-specific. 

To be honest, I’m too tired to be angry. Maybe someone in marketing is getting a growling or losing a pay rise. But these worldviews become prevalent not out of spite, but its equally dangerous cousin: wilful ignorance. The kind that makes it socially permissible to make vulnerable rangatahi the butt of the joke without stopping to ask why—or how we got here in the first place. 

But chin up, ākonga. I feel change in the air. Because whatever Chorus claims, in truth we are the fibre of Aotearoa—checking on our neighbours, supporting our communities. Our collective voices contribute to art, policy, and culture in our vibrant capital, banding together when the going gets tough. 

It is my greatest pleasure to be a thread in that matrix. I only hope if you cringed at the Chorus advertisement, you know you are not alone. And most importantly—you are enough.